Posts Tagged ‘MTV’

It’s time for an all-new episode of The Flickcast! And it’s a special one. It’s our 300th episode.! We know, right?

On this week’s show Chris and Joe don’t really do anything special to commemorate the 300th episode, but they do discuss all sorts of new and recurring topics. Some of these topics include Fear the Walking Dead, The Last Ship, Mr. Robot, the upcoming Shannara Chronicles, Netflix and Hulu, Strike Back and the tragic death of director and horror icon Wes Craven. There’s also the usual more.

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the Wes Craven classic Scream and Joe’s pick of the novel The Martian, soon to be a major motion picture.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

It’s been some time since I did a full on review here. It’s been even longer since it has been a movie review. But since I think I am the first on The Flickcast staff to check it out, it only felt write to post my thoughts on Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa. The other night I got to check out the advances screening of the latest work from Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass team.

But instead of being just a hidden camera prank movie, Johnny and the team put together a narrative that ties all of their stunts and pranks together. This story features Johnny in the role of Irving, an elderly gentleman who just lost his wife who is charged with driving his grandson Billy cross country to his deadbeat dad. As expected, “Hilarity ensues”. (Keeping this review spoiler free, especially since a lot of the pranks are in the commercial)

During Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, there is a mix of improv scenes between Irving and Billy to help develop their relationship and try to put some heart in the movie, though many times they fall flat. My Whiskey and Waffles counterpart put it the best as he described two different Johnny Knoxvilles. There is an actor Johnny Knoxville and the prankster Johnny Knoxville.

While the same person, the outward appearance of their actions stand out against each other. The issue doesn’t come from either of these not being believable or enjoyable but when they are presented with each other in the same project, they just don’t mesh well. Unlike Borat which gave a full one hundred percent commitment to the bit, Bad Grandpa just isn’t as believable and comes across as more of a hidden camera feel rather than the faux documentary.

The concept of ancillary books to large comic events is becoming common place. No longer does an event take place in the confines of it’s own limited series or the pages of the characters involved, now it is everywhere. Marvel’s newest event, Avengers VS. X-Men, is no exception to that new rule, although Marvel might just be changing the game a little bit.

Marvel has teamed up with MTV to bring you Avengers VS. X-Men: War Journals, a web series that gives you a behind the scenes look at the event from the perspective of the people actually creating it:

Join Axel Alonso (Marvel Editor in Chief), Tom Brevoort (Marvel SVP/Executive Editor) and Nick Lowe (Senior Editor) as they discuss putting their own personal allegiances aside to craft the biggest story in Marvel history and meet fans at Midtown Comics in NYC for the largest Avengers VS. X-Men launch party in the world! As fans argue about who will win—Avengers or X-Men—some of the hottest celebrities—DJ Pauly D, Big Time Rush and the Wanted—let you know just which team they’ve chosen! Plus, discover more bonus clips featuring the biggest names in comics exclusively at MTV Geek.

Oliver Stone is a very capable director. His visual style makes almost anything he crafts watchable. Unfortunately, lately his choices in films have not really allowed him to embrace his more frenetic skill sets.

That is about to change when the gloriously chaotic Savages hits theaters. For those unfamiliar with Stone’s new film here is the synopsis:

Laguna Beach entrepreneurs Ben (Aaron Johnson), a peaceful and charitable Buddhist, and his closest friend Chon (Taylor Kitsch), a former Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary, run a lucrative, homegrown industry—raising some of the best marijuana ever developed. They also share a one-of-a-kind love with the extraordinary beauty Ophelia (Blake Lively). Life is idyllic in their Southern California town…until the Mexican Baja Cartel decides to move in and demands that the trio partners with them.

Sounds like a ton of fun, and now thanks to MTV we get a chance to see the trailer deliver on that promise. The film looks like a cross between Domino and Traffic with all the best parts of each preserved. Of course we wont know if that for sure until the movie is actually released, but this trailer has put Savages high on our to-see list.

There is a troubling trend brewing in the wake of the current influx of modern reboots. That trend is the incessant and entirely predictable whining about every detail that is released.

Today brings a brand new detail for the internet to get up in arms about. We will be able to see into Robocop‘s eyes through his visor.

This detail was unveiled at MTV by Joel Kinnaman the star of the upcoming remake:

RoboCop is going to be a lot more human… The first movie is one of my favorite movies. I love it. Of course, Verhoeven has that very special tone, and it’s not going to have that tone. It’s a re-imagination of it. There’s a lot of stuff from the original. There are some details and throwbacks, but this version is a much better acting piece, for Alex Murphy and especially when he is RoboCop. It’s much more challenging.

It’s not going to be jaw action. They’re still working on the suit and how it’s going to look, but the visor is going to be see-through,” he said. “You’re going to see his eyes.

I appreciate that they understand the Verhoeven tone and are not trying to recapture it, instead use the cornerstones of the original and make something new. As for the see through visor, that is more up in the air. It could make RoboCop much more relatable, or it could be like Snake Eye’s mouth in GI Joe, unnessecarry and distracting.

Welcome to the future, a world where it is news that a feature film is being shot on 35mm film instead of digital or in 3D. We now know that the new Star Trek film will be one of those such films, although that doesn’t mean we will be spared the 3-D post conversion.

“I’m sure, like many people, you see what you do and you go, ‘I really could have done that one better, I should have done that, that was a mistake, more of this, less of that.’ You always do that… I’m hoping that as we do the next one, all the mistakes that I’ve made that I’ve hopefully learned from, I can bring to this one and hope make it better.

We’re shooting on film, 2-D, and then we’ll do a good high-end conversion like the ‘Harry Potter’ movie and all that. Luckily, with our release date now we have the months needed to do it right because if you rush it, it never looks good.

We were talking about [shooting in IMAX] and I would love to do it. IMAX is my favorite format; I’m a huge fan,”

While it is nice that J.J. is looking to get into the IMAX business, post conversion 3D has a rocky history. He sited the most recent Harry Potter film as the standard he expects, but even then shooting for 2D and converting it after the fact never looks as good.

Think back to the early 1990’s. Everyone loved skating and nightclubs, Clinton was taking jogs and having heart attacks, and MTV was blowing up with their original animated content late at night with a block they titled Liquid Television.

Here was the training ground for some of the most iconic shows of the decade got their start and later became huge shows on MTV. Shows like Aeon Flux, Beavis & Butthead, and The Maxx all started off on Liquid Television, and later went on to brand off into major motion pictures and more.

Much like how Adult Swim got its start on Cartoon Network, Liquid Television attempted to spawn more than just a few popular animated series, but possibly a bigger block. Sadly, the TV block met its demise in 1994, locking away some of these obscure shows and shorts for what would seem to be forever.

Now, thanks to the power of the internet, we get to relive some of those awesome moments again online, all over at LiquidTelevision.com. There, you can enjoy some classics like Dog Boy, Winter Steele, and The Maxx, while catching a few series and shorts that should have made it onto the weird block of TV back in the day, such as MTV2’s Wonder Showzen.

So head on over to their official site, and let’s see if MTV can find space on one of their several channels to re-air some of these awesome shows on TV once again.

MTV has partnered with comic legend Stan Lee to produce The Seekers, an original property with the twist that its writer and illustrator will be chosen be The Man himself.

The basic outline is that, “the Seekers is the story of an ancient people who have been planted on earth and little by little start to arise” to destroy the planet, says Lee. Defending the planet are a group of heroes, whose look and background, presumably, will be fleshed out by the winning pair.

The contest itself begins August 1, when artists and authors alike will have the opportunity to submit their work through a nomination page on MTV.com. At the end of the month, “MTV Geek’s editorial team will narrow the pool down to 20 and feature their work on the site.” From there, visitors to the site will vote for their favorites, winnowing the selections down to five stories and five artists for Lee and MTV Geek to decide on. The winners will be announced at New York Comic Con in October.

In what will come as no surprise to anyone, except maybe my mom, the MTV Movie Award nominations have been released and the most popular and creatively vacant film franchise this side of middle earth leads the pack. That’s right, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is on top with eight nominations.

The news is not all bad though as both Inception and Harry Potter are also lead contenders. In fact, aside from the obvious Twilight nominations, most of the nominations are not so bad. Many of the better films from 2010 are represented, including Kick-Ass, which has gone mostly forgotten in the retrospective hoopla.

Aside from the traditional Best Movie and Best Kiss, this year also brings a brilliant new category to the world of cinematic awards: “Best Line From A Movie.” This is not only a genius category for the shallow festivities of MTV, but it is something that all award shows should consider in the future.

In the world of cinema fandom movie quotes are often a defining factor in the quality of a film. The more quotable the movie, the more likely it will find a home in the hearts of film geeks the world over.

The nominations for Twilight are to be expected from MTV, but the nominations for Harry Potter are a little more of a surprise. Up to this point in time the Harry Potter movies didn’t really make a dent in the target audience of MTV.

Of course the franchise remains popular the world over, but for MTV, known for immature, shallow drama and sex appeal, to acknowledge the penultimate Potter film in so many categories shows that the Potter is still relevant to pop culture in general.

Sadly, we were not that impressed when we saw the first trailer for MTV’s upcoming Teen Wolf series. To us, it just seems a bit too much Twilight and not much substance.

Fortunately, with a new trailer out now from the network, it seems we may have to re-think our opinion — at least a little. In the new trailer, we still get the requisite shirtlessness and hormone-fueled teen angst, but it does look less and less like Twilight.

With it’s grittier look and tone this version of Teen Wolf seems intended not just for the younger MTV audience but perhaps for more mature viewers as well. For more, here’s the official synopsis from MTV:

Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever. Now he struggles to understand who he is and what he might become. Is he more wolf than human – or is it the other way around? Whichever it is, it’s not going to be easy. Scott will try to control his urges, but mostly he’s scared that it’s his urges that could end up controlling him.

TEEN WOLF is the story of Scott as he tries to walk the line between what he wants and what he can’t help from wanting. Will the bite end up being a gift? Or will it be a curse? And what will it all mean for his relationship with Allison – the girl he can’t get enough of? Only time will tell if he should embrace his newfound powers, or if he should fear them.

Check out the trailer after the jump. Teen Wolf premieres Sunday, June 5, right after the 2011 MTV Movie awards.